DALLAS — Dwight Powell is headed to the EuroLeague 11 days after the Dallas Mavericks waived him. Fenerbahçe, the Istanbul club that won the 2025 EuroLeague title, is finalizing a one-year contract with the 35-year-old center, according to Donatas Urbonas of BasketNews, who reported Friday that the two sides had been talking for some time and that several other EuroLeague teams had shown strong interest in Powell. Eurohoops matched the report later Friday with its own sources.
Powell has never played in the EuroLeague. Fenerbahce coach Šarūnas Jasikevičius has taken the club to the Final Four in each of the last three seasons, and its most recent season ended with a loss in the EuroLeague semifinals and a Turkish league championship.
Dwight Powell’s Exit From The Dallas Mavericks
Powell spent training camp on a one-year, minimum-salary contract that carried a $1 million partial guarantee. He played in three of Dallas’ four preseason games and averaged 1.3 points, 2.0 rebounds, and 3.7 assists in 12.1 minutes. The Mavericks waived him two days before their season opener against the Houston Rockets and kept second-year center Moussa Cissé over him.
Mavericks coach Dusty May opened his availability that day by thanking Powell, who had been in Dallas for all of May’s first training camp with the team.
“I think Dwight Powell, in my short stint here this summer, this fall, up until this season, his professionalism, his attitude, he exemplified everything that you want a Maverick to be about,” May said. “And so I just want to say thanks to him. He certainly had an impact on all of us as a player here in the organization.”
Masai Ujiri, the Mavericks’ president of basketball operations, called Powell “the consummate professional” in a team statement that day. The statement also covered Powell’s work in the Dallas community, where he was a finalist for the NBA Cares Community Assist Award in 2018-19, and said Dallas will always be a home for him.
May did not get into why Dallas moved on from Powell. He said a lot of factors go into those decisions, that management told him about the move, and that nobody had talked yet about Powell joining the coaching staff.
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” May explained. “Look, I’m relatively new to the NBA game, so I don’t know the ins and outs and the calendar with moves and things like that. So would I be surprised to see Dwight playing somewhere? I wouldn’t. He still has some miles in the tank.”
Powell’s 12 Seasons In Dallas
The Boston Celtics sent Powell to Dallas with Rajon Rondo on Dec. 18, 2014, about six months after the Charlotte Hornets drafted him 45th overall out of Stanford. He appeared in 5 games for Boston before playing 763 regular-season games for the Mavericks, the fifth-most in franchise history.
Over 768 career games, Powell averaged 6.5 points, 4.2 rebounds, and 1.0 assist in 17.5 minutes while shooting 60.6% from the field. That percentage ranks fourth in team history. He is sixth all-time with the Mavericks in both offensive and total rebounds. His best scoring season came in 2018-19, when he averaged 10.6 points.
Powell ruptured his right Achilles tendon against the LA Clippers on Jan. 21, 2020, ending a season in which he had started 37 of his 40 games.
In 2021-22, he played all 82 regular-season games and then started all 18 of Dallas’ playoff games during the run to the Western Conference finals. A season later, he shot a career-best 73.2% from the field over 76 games, 64 of them starts.
During the 2024 run to the NBA Finals, which Dallas lost to Boston in five games, Powell appeared in 13 playoff games. Last season, he shot 64.4% from the field and averaged 3.3 points, 4.1 rebounds, and 1.1 assists in 14.3 minutes over 63 games, including 12 starts.
Powell, who was born in Toronto, helped Canada win bronze at the 2023 FIBA World Cup and played for Canada at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Dallas is 3-2 and hosts Houston on Friday at American Airlines Center.
